This book is an old-fashioned work of persuasion that aims to convince you of one thing: that I am one of the most influential social commentators of the 21st century. To this end I have decided to take the generally accepted premise that modern culture is dumbing down and argue the opposite, as this will guarantee me a lot of attention.

No one will take me seriously unless this work has a veneer of intellectual rigour, so allow me to introduce you to the Sleeper Curve. This is the pretentious name I have given to the premise that the popular media - usually dismissed as lowbrow fluff - is actually making our minds much sharper.

Take video games. The common view is that the people who play them are witless, atavistic sociopaths. Nothing could be further from the truth. Modern games have a free-form structure that constantly challenges the player to interact with the environment and make complex decisions.

By contrast, books deliver a linear narrative that rarely forces the reader to think. What book can teach you how to cut someone up with a chainsaw, hide their body in a dumpster and evade capture by crawling through a ventilation duct?

With this in mind, you might ask why I am choosing to publish this work in book form. The answer is simple. The Sleeper Curve shows that gamers are too clever to be taken in by this nonsense.

You can make a similar claim for television. Is Hill Street Blues better than Starsky and Hutch? Series such as The West Wing carry several different plot lines in a single episode: this would have baffled viewers in the 1960s. Now your average teenager can keep track of Hollyoaks and Crossroads while doing their homework.

Reality TV shows are the supreme example of dumbing up, as they make huge demands on a viewer's emotional intelligence. It's up to you, and you alone, to understand the social nuances of Celebrity Love Island and to work out if there's anything at all going on in Abi Titmuss's head, because she really doesn't have a clue herself.

Not many people claim that the internet has been a force of cultural deprivation, but I need you to assume everyone does say that or my already slender book will come to a premature conclusion. It's just not true that the internet is a passive medium that makes few learning requirements of its users. U can snd msgs and make lots of new friends. Visit stevenberlinjohnson.com to see how hunky I am.

Films are also more complex. The first Star Wars picture had far fewer characters than the first part of Lord of the Rings. The Sleeper Curve says that our modern trash is better than our parents' trash. And as philosospher James Flynn has proved, we are all now much brighter thanks to this trash. Last century's brainiac is today's simpleton.